


DE Artfest: Crossover

by lastrideoftheday



Category: Detroit Evolution - Fandom, Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), Doctor Who
Genre: DEArtfest, Detroit Evolution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:47:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25361149
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastrideoftheday/pseuds/lastrideoftheday
Summary: Chris had to address the elephant in the room. “This wasn’t in here before,” he said. At least, the last time he’d been in the DPD breakroom, he couldn’t remember there being a bright blue English police box in front of the coffee machine.“Yeah, I brought it a bit closer. I thought I’d save us the walk. So, you want to come for a ride? Anywhere in time and space. One trip.”
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	DE Artfest: Crossover

In just a single day, Chris’s world had been turned upside down. Everything he thought he knew was now overturned, replaced by something much weirder and more wonderful. In the space of a working day he’d discovered that aliens existed, they frequently tried to invade Earth, and often, the one to foil their invasion attempts was another alien, who looked pretty much human, called the Doctor. Not only that, but today, he and the Doctor had saved the Earth from an imminent invasion. He never would have thought before today that Earth’s possible doom could be brought about by a race of extraterrestrials that he could only compare to really angry-looking butternut squashes.

And he never would have thought before today that he’d save the world.

At least, that was what the Doctor kept telling him. He didn’t think he’d really played that big of a part. It was the Doctor who’d done all the impressive stuff. All he’d done was his job. Granted, his job didn’t usually involve murderous invasive alien forces, but… he was a detective, and using his skills as a detective was something he did every day. Even if it didn’t usually end in uncovering a secret alien base underneath the streets of Detroit.

But the Doctor was insistent that he’d been amazing. Brilliant, even. Chris didn’t know about that, but she seemed certain enough, and now he and the Doctor were standing in front of a police phone box, the Doctor giving Chris the biggest smile he’d ever seen.

He had to address the elephant in the room. “This wasn’t in here before,” he said. At least, the last time he’d been in the DPD breakroom, he couldn’t remember there being a bright blue English police box in front of the coffee machine.

“Yeah, I brought it a bit closer. It was parked down at the docks before, but I thought I’d save us the walk. So, you want to come for a ride? Anywhere in time and space. One trip.”

“This is your time machine?”

“Yep!”

He opened his mouth, about to question why a time machine looked like a police box, then gave up. Honestly, it was the least strange thing he’d encountered today.

She pushed the door open, beckoning him in. “You’re gonna love this bit,” she said.

He followed. Well, it was official - there was now nothing that could possibly be stranger than the day he’d had today. Instead of the tiny interior that he’d been expecting, he was greeted with a huge room, glowing with futuristic-looking lights. In the centre were six massive glowing columns, all bending towards a central column with a console surrounding its base, made up of a mess of different levers and buttons. Everything was hexagons – the walls, the railings, the floor. It was as if someone had turned a beehive cyberpunk. It was amazing. Well, aside from the fact that the glowing columns weren’t doing much good for his eyes – but considering it was otherwise the most incredible place he’d ever set foot in, he let it slide.

For some reason, the first question that escaped his lips was “You live here?”

“Yeah, it’s great. Well, not here specifically. Not all the time. There’s a great library just down that corridor, I’ve been spending a lot of time there lately. And the swimming pool’s down that way. At least, I think it is. Haven’t been there for a couple of days, it could have moved.”

“And this is what you do? You travel through… time, or whatever, and help people out?”

“Pretty much.”

Chris couldn’t stop looking around him. It was all glowing walls and blue lights – but at the same time, it looked like the whole place had grown out of the earth, like a rock formation, or an ancient forest.

The Doctor was by the console, and she had her hand hovering over a lever. She looked up. “So, come on. Where do you want to go?”

“Me? Well, uh... I've always wanted to go to England, I guess.”

The Doctor stared at him. “England? You have the entirety of time and space to choose from! Every planet that ever was or will be! Why are people so obsessed with England? How about a different time period at least? Victorian England? Industrial Revolution? How about seeing Shakespeare? Maybe not Shakespeare, I’ve been to meet him a few times before, the chances are stacking up that I’ll run into my past self. Come on. One trip to see the impossible, one place you’ve always dreamed of going.”

“Anywhere?”

“Anywhere, and any when.”

Chris hesitated. “I mean… there’s one thing I’d love.”

“Tell me.”

The memory played across Chris’s mind, as vivid as if it were happening in front of him. The sun dipping below the horizon. His wife’s face lit by the soft light. And as the stars came up, his son in his arms reaching up to the sky with his tiny fists as if he could grasp the moon itself. “My son, Damian - well, he’s only two, but... I’d love to be able to give him, like… a rock from the Moon.”

The Doctor grinned, a beautiful wide smile that filled her whole face. “Now we’re talking.” She reached for a lever on the console, and flashed him another grin. “Hold tight.”

-

His foot hovered over the threshold. On one side, the floor of the TARDIS, softly lit up by the glow of the console behind him. In front of him, the surface of the Moon. Unremarkable, grey, and very dusty – but at the same time, so unlike anything he’d ever seen before. “And you’re sure this is safe?” he said.

“Safe? I’m never sure of that.” The Doctor winked at him. And then suddenly she ran out of the TARDIS and onto the surface of the Moon, her shoes kicking up clouds of dust. She turned around to face Chris, and offered her hand out to him, grinning. “But one thing I am sure of, and it’s that some things are worth the risk.”

Well, here goes nothing, he thought, and grabbed the Doctor’s hand.

He stepped over the TARDIS threshold. The ground was solid under his feet. His shoe displaced a cloud of dust where it landed.

He was on the Moon.

The Doctor let go of Chris’s hand. She had a twinkle in her eye. Like an excited child, she said, “Look up.”

He did. And there in the sky, above the grey horizon, was home. The Earth hung there, silent, serene. A blue dot, bright against the black expanse of space. White clouds spiralled across its atmosphere, veiling the land below.

He tried to say something, and realised he couldn’t. There was nothing he could say that even came close to expressing the thoughts in his head.

“Earth,” said the Doctor.

“Yeah,” he managed to say.

The Doctor dusted off the ground at her feet and sat down. Chris followed suit, an odd feeling washing over him as he did so – it was as if they were sitting down to have a picnic, as if they were in the middle of a park on a sunny day. But the nearest park was thousands of miles away, on Earth, and he was sitting on a dusty rock in the middle of space.

“Hey, wait,” he said, after a moment, “Shouldn’t I like, not be able to breathe? And doesn’t the Moon have less gravity? Shouldn’t I feel lighter or something?”

The Doctor’s grin dropped. “I was hoping you wouldn’t ask that. Always spoils the magic when I have to explain it. It’s the TARDIS shields, they form an atmosphere in the TARDIS’s vicinity. And I turned the gravity up, as well. Trust me, low gravity sounds fun, but it’s a pain.”

“That… makes sense,” he said uncertainly.

“Well, it’s against all the rules of logic you’ve ever learned,” said the Doctor. “So I’m betting it doesn’t. But, all things considered, you’re taking it pretty well. Not everyone does, you know.”

“Really?”

“And not everyone keeps their cool while facing a bunch of aliens threatening to destroy their planet,” she continued.

He realised that the compliment was directed towards him, and wasn’t sure what to do with it. Instead of answering, he brought his gaze upwards once more to the blue-and-white circle in the sky. He’d done the same thing from the other direction so many times: gazed up from the surface of the Earth to see the Moon. But the Earth took up a lot more of the sky. And from the Moon, it seemed a lot brighter as well. The Moon was dusty, and dark, but the Earth was bright and blue and full of life.

“That’s everyone I’ve ever known.” Looking up at the Earth, it suddenly seemed smaller than it ever had. “Everyone who’s ever lived is up there.”

“Yeah.”

“My wife, my son… they’re somewhere on there. My wife’s… it’s the end of her shift right now. She’s probably on her way to pick up Damian. Probably stuck in traffic.” A laugh escaped him at the absurdity of it all. He shook his head. “And I’m up here. On the Moon.”

He glanced at the Doctor. She had a knowing smile, like she’d done this a thousand times. The Moon was probably a casual day trip for her, compared to everything else she’d seen. But for him, he’d never dreamed he’d do something like this. Would his friends ever believe him? He imagined trying to tell Nines, or Gavin, or Tina, that he’d been to the Moon. Or anything about the day he’d had, really. He wondered how they’d respond if he told them that he’d spent the day saving the world from a race of vegetable-resembling aliens bent on destroying the Earth.

That was the entire Earth, up there. All of his friends were tiny dots occupying a minuscule fraction on its surface. The city he lived in, the places he went to every day, would barely cover a pinprick.

“It’s good, right?” said the Doctor.

“It’s… sobering.”

“The feeling of how small you are compared to the rest of the universe.”

Somehow, she’d voiced the exact thought in Chris’s head. She was more right than she knew. “And the feeling everything you’ve ever done is… insignificant.” Chris muttered. “Except the bad things.”

The Doctor looked at him. There was something in that look, like she somehow knew exactly the entire meaning behind those words, but wanted to hear it from his mouth.

He paused, and then, hesitantly, began: “You mentioned that you’d been at the revolution.” When he had first met the Doctor, she’d excitedly rambled about having visited the android revolution, like it was a permanent installment that could be visited at any time. Now he knew she was a time traveller, her words made a lot more sense. “I was… on the wrong side of history. I tell myself that it’s over, now, and although I can keep regretting what I did, it’s in the past. I can’t change what happened. I can’t help but feel like anything else I’ve done is so small in comparison. What are we, a tiny planet in the middle of a huge galaxy, or whatever? And I feel like the only impact I will have made is a bad one.”

“You’re right, I was there,” said the Doctor. “And I remember your face. I saw so many faces, in those few days… I remember them all.”

Great, someone else who’d never forget his face. He couldn’t help but feel all the feelings crowding back in, like they always did – the guilt, the regret, the wish filling up every part of his being that he’d never done what he did.

The Doctor continued, her voice suddenly gentler. “What you're feeling... I've been there. There are so many things I regret, things you can’t change with a time machine. No matter how much you want to. And some things… you can’t forget. Maybe you don’t have the right to decide that they should be forgotten. But…” She looked up into the sky once more, back towards the Earth. He followed her gaze.

“You know what you said when you looked at the Earth from up here?” she said. “Thousands of miles out in the middle of space, and you looked up at the Earth, and you wondered what your wife was up to.”

Chris frowned. “And?”

The Doctor’s expression as she looked up at the Earth was still somber, but something about it had changed. The twinkle in her eye was back. “And if your wife was up here, she’d say exactly the same thing. Every night, your species looks up at the sky and sees the vastness of the universe, every solar system, every galaxy. Every civilization, every individual that ever lived is somewhere out there. And you see that all of that is out there, but then you go back inside, back to your families, because none of it compares to what you already have on Earth.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, you were wondering what impact you would leave behind on the universe. Well, ask the people who love you.”

Beyond the Earth, somewhere, was the rest of the galaxy. He couldn’t see them now, but behind that big blue dot, there were millions of stars, millions more solar systems like this one. “But that’s… different. It doesn’t change that the biggest thing I’ve done was something that caused pain to others.”

“Try telling that to the boy who’s gonna get a moon rock from his dad,” said the Doctor. “You feel like life is made up of the big things. Births, deaths, weddings. Going to the Moon. But life isn’t made of big things. It’s made of a million little moments.”

Chris wondered if he agreed or not. He saw her point, but… he didn’t know. At least, not yet. He contented himself with staying silent, watching the clouds as they spiraled across the Earth’s atmosphere.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Doctor get up. He looked round. She was bending down, picking something up from the ground. She returned to Chris and held it out, inviting him to take it.

It was a rock. He took it, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“I tell you what,” said the Doctor, smiling. “Damian’s gonna grow up with the coolest dad in the galaxy.”

“Yeah.” He pocketed the Moon rock. “Yeah… he is.”


End file.
